More on Akaroa
So… I went out to Akaroa with a tour company called Kowhai (Ko-phay), which was a great little family run operation. It was in a small van, so we got to drive through the Port Hills to get to some great look-out points over Lyttleton and Akaroa harbours (the big companies can’t navigate the windy roads). The gorse is in full bloom, giving a lot of the hills a yellow tint. BTW – in that photo of Akaroa, you can see the small teardrop shaped land mass (not quite an island?). It was the site of a large maori massacre by a northern tribe. We stopped off at the Hilltop cafe for a coffee over looking the harbour, then headed down into some small towns on the way. We passed by the oldest hotel in New Zealand (the Duveauchelle (1880, if I remember correctly)- run by 2 French brothers, till one of them married the local chief’s daughter and they had to high-tail it to Hawaii). Then we stopped at Barry’s Bay cheese factory. There was no cheese making on that day, but we watched a video about it and sampled some different varieties. I got some of the local bleu, which was okay.
Then we drove into Akaroa, which is a charming little town. The permanent population is only about 500, but there are lots of people with vacation homes there. It is French town, although it was owned by the British. Basically, a bunch of French settlers came over, stopped off in the North island to refuel, got drunk, told the local (Brits) what they were up to, some Brits got on a really fast ship and beat the French to Akaroa by about 6 days. Even though the Brits had claimed the town, the settlers decided to stay, and so now there are lots of French things around town (including all the street signs). We wandered around town for about half an hour (they were having firefighting relays in the park) and then our guide cooked us a bbq picnic (it was so cute – we had a tablecloth and umbrella. Plus it had been ages since I had 3 bean salad or potato salad. It was great.). Then we had some more time to wander around town before I went on the harbour cruise to go see the dolphins.
So – the cruise was fantastic. The scenery was great, there were tons of birds, we saw a couple of fur seals, and the dolphins were incredible. They are Hector’s Dolphins, the smallest and rarest of all the marine species. And they have the prettiest coloration. We saw absolute tons, and the first calf of the new season.
On the way home we stopped at a stone beach, which also had a lot of birds.
So yeah. All in all a really fantastic day out.
By the way – I don’t remember if I ever mentioned, but the most common local gulls are the red-beaked gulls. You can’t really see in this photo, but they have red legs and red beaks. A whole bunch usually hang out in the square in front of my office building. i think they’re quite pretty.
Not much new here. Work is fine, and I think Caroline is really picking everything up. I have a ton of calls to make at lunch (my bus company, the tax office, the Melbourne police, etc etc etc). I started cleaning up my room yesterday. I have lots of errands to do this week (haircut, gym stuff, taxes, exchanging my used books, shipping stuff home, and all that jazz). Still, I think with Caroline on board, everything should go smoothly (fingers crossed). I’m still a bit nervous about not having a copy of my bus itinerary, but hopefully that will be sorted soon.
Other stuff, check out the first photo here. Pretty….
Tags: Travel
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